I have written this a zillion times before … but I have been in and around economics since 1993, and never in my entire career have I had a teacher or article or book teach me about “trickle down” economics. This is a perjorative term conjured from the ether by anti-market proponents, and the strawiest of straw men with which to criticize markets.

I will give a dollar (or produce a short blog post in your honor) to anyone who can name who said the following:

Unlike Friedman the “evangelical,” added _____, ______ was more of an “anthropologist” with little interest in influencing policymakers or becoming one himself. At a press briefing following a meeting with President Reagan shortly after he won the Nobel, _____famously remarked that the economy was in a “depression” and that if he had been Reagan’s economics professor, he would have given the president an “incomplete.” When asked what he thought of trickle-down/supply-side economics—the bedrock of Reaganomics—_____ called it “a gimmick.” Shortly thereafter, he was booted offstage.

No peeking. And no, it was not Paul Krugman.

As you might imagine, I sort of put this fellow in the economics version of Richard Feynman, and I believe his work is still understudied at least at the intro level. Here is another excerpt:

He could also be fiercely independent in his views. ____ recalled a debate between ____ and Friedrich Hayek over welfare capitalism. Hayek believed even a little bit of welfare capitalism would eventually lead to a totalitarian, Soviet-like regime. _____ disagreed. “To paraphrase, ____ said we already have a great deal of welfare capitalism and nothing seems to have been destroyed. We still have a great economy and a great political system which gives consumers the opportunity to express themselves, both through their purchasing and also through their electoral behavior, and they seem to be satisfied. Maybe there isn’t a slippery slope.” The debate between the two continued up until _______’s death in December 1991. Hayek followed suit a few months later.